Trillion Dollar War cont.

While doing more research i found more information on the book, The Three Trillion Dollar War. It picks up on where i left off on my last post.
So far as i said the government is hiding the true cost of the war to Americans. They are doing all that they can to make it seem less worst than it already is. However this is only hurting our economic system.
This artcle i stumbled upon simply states what the author of the book is trying to pursuade to its readers,
"As the authors detail, the Bush administration has used every trick in the book to hide the real price tag -- concealing non-combat casualty figures, keeping double sets of books, not factoring in support troops, and allowing the Pentagon to produce budgets so contradictory, obscure and incompetently presented that there is literally no way to determine how much it has spent. The authors had to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain much of the information in their book. "

The article also continues to talk about the futures of war veterans, how will disabled veterans possibily be paid if the country will be showered with past debts.

For more information on this article click here.

The Three Trillion Dollar War

There is this great book out that talks about the true cost of the Iraq war, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes. The book focuses on the many cost of the war, which include military equipment, helping the wounded and the amount of economical damage in Iraq. (I myself must admit that i didn't even consider how much it would cost to cover the economical damage.)

You can find out more about the book here at there main site: The Trillion Dollar War

Since i don't own the book i can't go into great detail of what exactly lies within it but i can say that it pin points what exactly the government is doing to hide the true amount of the wars cost. More so the book gives suggestions of what could of been done with all the money spent. I mean there are numerous possibilities.

Obviously this war in Iraq is responsible for our economic crisis. There are some many problems and this war is only adding on.

trillion....

WOW according to this graph this war is beyond out of control. It is more expensive than any other war that the United States has ever fought in. Such a shame. Right now 1986 is looking like a good time period to live in.
Ok, so far this war has reached billions, but is it possible that this war could or already have reached the trillions?? Imagine what you could do with a trillion dollars.

"It is enough to pay for the entire 1976 federal budget, adjusted for inflation. Enough to write a check for $37,500 to every Iraqi man, woman, and child. Enough to buy 169,492 Black Hawk helicopters, or 455 stealth bombers. Enough, in nominal terms, to pay for the entire federal government from 1789 to 1957. And it’s 10 times more than what specialists predict it would take to eradicate malaria once and for all."*

It is not a shocker that many people do not know exactly how much money is being spent. I believe that the government tries to keep all of the spending on war a secret to distract people from the truth.

"To distract people from the real price tag of a two-front war, the president and Congress have used an unprecedented and fiscally irresponsible budgetary trick: a series of “emergency” supplemental spending bills totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. This scheme has allowed them not only to hide the costs of the conflicts but also to avoid painful budget choices while funneling billions of dollars in unvetted goodies to favored interest groups."*

Article here

Ridiculous!!!

It is becoming pretty obvious that as each year that passes our debt will only become bigger. Last year alone congress could not agree on a budget for most necessary priorities. It probably is because there is so much that is needed but there is only so little that is there to give, money wise. But hey that is only my opinion. It seems the only way to get the money is to cut off from another source.
Can you guess where that cut came from? They cut it from many mandatory programs which include healthcare coverage. I can’t possible see how they find fighting more important than caring for the lives of people. There are numerous people that depend on Healthcare. More importantly there are children who need healthcare coverage. How else are children suppose to survive? I’m pretty sure wishing will not help in a case like this.

In the chart to the side, you can clearly see that more than 90 percent of the nation’s budget went towards spending on Wars while children heath care got only a thin amount. Not surprisingly the president agreed to this. He gave permission to give approximately $70 billion to war spending. This is just ridiculous.

Not All Is Well

I believe that all the money that is being spent in the war in Iraq is not necessary. Like I said numerous times it could be spend on more useful things.

While doing research I came upon an article that came as a shock. It is a 2004 county-level data and statistics focuses on the distribution of Food Stamp Program benefits. Those who participated in the survey are mostly low-income families. It was found that about half of the people who were surveyed did not receive food stamp benefits. For many people benefits are there only means of survival. Without this support these people will run into many problems including not being able to buy food for their families. This could lead to sickness and death. A few important things that I found are:

-Counties with lower poverty rates and higher median household incomes had lower percentagesof low-income people that were Food Stamp recipients.
-A significant number of counties, 13.2 percent, had below-average percentages of Food Stamps, yet had above-average poverty rates.
-The rural South had the highest percentage of enrollment in the Food Stamp program and more than half of all children were eligible for lunches through the National School Lunch Program.

Keep in mind that this article is about 4 years old. Now that the United States is spending even more money just imagine what is happening now. The problem could be 10 times worst.

Here is a link to the article:

Half of Low-Income People Not Receiving Food Stamp Benefits

Not split down the middle!!

In the eyes of many a million dollars is a lot, and a billion dollars, well let’s just say, is a dream come true. That’s what the United States literally pushes into the hands of those fighting wars. Just imagine what you could do with it. Education, food, social security, protection, health, social services, jobs, government, and much more can be taken care of. Not that these things aren’t already taken care of but they could use more money. As I said in my last post only 56 percent of the national budget is used for this. That is about half the budget. Why is it that the other half is used on only one thing, wars, while the rest is used for about a thousand other things? That obviously isn’t being split evenly. With the cost of the war rising quickly it doesn’t look like anything will change for the good. It does seem that if the Iraq War also known as Operation Iraqi Freedom continues then more and more tax-payers money will be spent. Meaning even less money will be provided for rather good causes that help us survive.

Spending As We Speak...

So while i was searching around for information on the amount of money that was spent on the war in Iraq i came upon this website that literally has a counter that counts the amount of money that is being spent as we speak. If you look to the top left of my blog you will find that counter. It changes so quickly. You could break it down like this...$4,681 per household. $1,721 per person. $341.4 million per day.
i got this little snippet from here. (You should really check out this site!!!!)
All that money could really be spent elsewhere. To get more in debt, that’s about 40 percent of taxes that is going into this war, while only 4, yes 4, percent went into education. I believe that if anything education should receive more than 4 percent. Receiving an education is way more important than fighting in a war. Students need knowledge that will allow them to succeed in the future so they could hopefully avoid conflicts such as war. If the money to teach is not available then that will mean fewer things to learn. That leaves about 56 percent for everything else that needs to be taken care of.

Money spent on the war in Iraq...

So far the war on Iraq has not been cheap for anyone. It seems that all we do is spend and spend as if the money will just appear out of the air when we need it. However that is far from the case. All the money that is spent on the war comes for us, the hard-working taxpayers.
On December 26, 2007 a war-spending bill was approved by the U.S. congress. This package included just about $90.9 billion that would be for spending on operations such as the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the “war on terror”. With the added $90 billion the grand total for spending added up to about $700 billion. Those fighting in Iraq received a big chunk of about $562 billion to spend. You can find out more by clicking here. You would think that a couple billion dollars would be enough to hold up for a while but no, all they need is more and more. And where is this more money coming from? Hard-working Americans! All of our taxes are used for fighting wars. Think about what we could be doing with all that money if it wasn’t spent on mostly war. For one, things would be a lot better than they are now.